March 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - A UN investigation into the 2018 Gaza protests has concluded that Israeli officers and their leaders may have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity. The human rights council’s commission of inquiry found that soldiers intentionally used live ammunition against civilians, who included children, women, journalists, health workers and people with disabilities.

The figures are telling: more than 6,000 people injured by Israeli bullets, with 183 killed. Renowned human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and Al-Haq had already denounced this policy, with B’Tselem calling on Israeli soldiers not to follow orders to shoot civilians. The people of Palestine still wonder whether such findings will be used by the international community to implement policy aimed at ending the Israeli occupation, or whether it will be business as usual.

The killing of Palestinian civilians during 2018 is part of a long list of ongoing Israeli crimes and violations. Israel, the occupying power, often denounces any reporting on its treatment of the people of Palestine – going as far as pushing for the expulsion of the representative of Human Rights Watch and refusing UN commissions of inquiry or special rapporteurs access to the occupied territories.

Israel has long been targeting Palestinian civil society organisations and human rights activists for exposing its ongoing policies of colonisation that deny the right of the Palestinian people to be free. Sadly, if members of the international community don’t act, the results of this commission of inquiry will eventually be added to other investigations – including the recently released EU report on Israeli settlement construction – and Israel will continue to violate international law and UN resolutions through the complicity of a number of UN member states.